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Andersson Technologies releases SynthEyes 1508

Andersson Technologies has released SynthEyes 1508, the latest version of its 3D tracking software, adding a rather neat-looking new system for tracking entire geometric hierarchies, rather than individual objects.

Meet GeoH: Geometry Hierarchy tracking
The main new feature in the release is the new Geometric Hierarchy (GeOH) tracking system (shown above) – a new toolset for tracking entire hierarchies of moving parts.

The system enables the resulting tracking data to be used to control not only the overall motion of 3D geometry, but its internal deformations.

It’s probably easiest to grasp with hard-surface objects: the example at the start of the video shows the process of tracking a pizza box with a hierarchy consisting of the base, back panel and lid.

Each moves as the box moves, preserving its geometric relationship to the others as the lid opens.

Automatic secondary tracking of mouths and eyebrows
Things get more interesting with characters: the second example shows the tracking of an actor’s head, including the mouth movements, using supervised trackers.

The primary tracking reconstructs the overall motion of the head, using parts of the face that do not move relative to one another, such as the ears, cheekbones and nose.

The secondary tracking reconstructs the motion of the jaw, enabling a 3D head replacement to deform automatically to match the actor’s mouth movements.

Other suggested uses of secondary tracking include the movements of eyebrows and bellies.

See the key features as bullet points
As usual, the feature list from the company’s official news release is very clear, and is reproduced in full below:

Directly tracks supplied meshes, or works from normal (supervised) trackers.

Creates animated deformations of single meshes, animated assemblies of individual meshes, or both.

Can be configured for arbitrarily deep and broad hierarchies.

Can layer on top of regular moving-object tracks to add secondary animation.

Integrates with motion capture shots to convert animated point clouds to joint angles, ie for the new BVH export.

New BVH import for rapid setup from existing rigs in other applications.